O’Coileáin was definitely in Myross when he wrote ‘An Buachaill Bán’. The first two lines describe perfectly the view from the height of Sliabh na nGar – the view of Castlehaven harbour, the wooded slope of the Lackareagh down to the water’s edge, with Rahine Castle, the League and Reen peninsula, and across the inlet Castletownshend village on the hillside.

‘Maidin læ ghil fá dhuille criant ghlais / Daire im aonar cois imeall trá’

(One bright morning under the green foliage / Alone by the ocean’s edge)

‘An Buachaill Ban’ is an Aisling poem of high quality. The word Aisling means a dream or vision. The vision the poet always sees is the spirit of Ireland as a majestic, radiant, beautiful maiden. Séan O Coileáin describes her appearance ‘í bhfis trém néallaibh do dhearcas spéirbhean’ – (in a vision I saw a beautiful maiden). From Aodhagán Ó Rathaille on, the spéirbhean (literally sky-woman) mourns the condition of Ireland and looks forward to the return of the Jacobites. The Irish  people had no leader in the 18th century. After Sarsfield there was no leader in whom they could place their hopes until the rise of O’Connell – ‘a wilderness of more than a hundred years’. In this despair, the only banner that promised another fight, and a reversal of their misfortune was the return of the Stuarts. In the ‘Aisling’ poems, Ireland’s woes are detailed – her princes (Red Hugh, Eoghan Rua O’Néill, Sarsfield etc) are all dead, her castles broken, her land in the possession of foreigners, her children scattered across the sea. ‘This Jacobite Aisling is quite typical of that genre; indeed, it is one of the most perfect, if in these we look for music and decoration’ wrote Corkery. This is a translation of the first verse from ‘The Hidden Ireland’ (pp 299/300) translated by Éireannach.

‘With crimson gleaming the dawn rose, beaming / On branching oaks nigh the golden shore, / Above me rustled their leaves, and dreaming, / Methought a nymph rose the blue waves o’er; /

Her brow was brighter than stars that light our / Dim, dewy earth ere the summer dawn, / But she spoke in mourning; “my heart of sorrow / Ne’er brings a morrow, mo Bhuachaill Bán”.

The ‘Battle of Ross’ is a long poem, which tells of a clash between local Orangemen, who paraded through the town of Rosscarbery on July 12, 1798, commemorating King William’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, with local Catholics.

‘July the twelfth in Ancient Ross / There was a furious battle / Where many an Amazonian lass / Made Irish bullets rattle.’

O’Coileáin was friendly with Colonel Townsend of Castletownsend demesne. On one occasion Ó Coileáin was arrested for running a school, which was prohibited by law to Catholics. He wrote a letter in verse to Colonel Townsend who had him released. In ‘Sweet Castletownshend Demense’ he extols the beauty of the village and in particular Townsend’s Demense. This is the first verse:

‘You gently sweet muses assist me, / And join in the sweet vocal air, / In praise of that sweet habitation / Where nature its beauties display. / I’ve roamed through all parts of this nation / I’ve travelled from Paris to Spain, / Yet I’ve found none so truly delightful / As Sweet Castletownshend Demense.’

Many of his sayings and exploits were kept alive in the oral folklore of the area. One Sunday morning in Stookeen Church, there happened to be in the congregation, a wandering beggar man, nicknamed Sciúirdín, and his little dog, Beití (Betty). During mass the little dog barked. The priest was very angry but said nothing. When mass was over the priest met Sciúirdín who was chatting with others near the gate. Béiti barked again. The priest caught the little dog and threw her against the wall, killing her. Sciúrdín was very upset but was afraid to say anything. Séan Máistir was among the crowd who witnessed what happened. He walked over to where Beití lay dead and composed a quatrain, the last line of which is: ‘Is ní bás gan sagart fuair madra Sciúirdín’. (And it wasn’t death without a priest that Sciúirdín’s dog received).

One day when Séan Maistir was returning from Poll’s Shebeen, obviously intoxicated, he sat on the ditch and tumbled into a lochán (pool) of water, ‘An Lochán Buí (the yellow pool). A woman with little sense happened to be passing and scolded Séan for being drunk and giving bad example. This was his reply:- ‘Fear na meisce síoraí agus bean na buile shíntí / Agus bean na buile / Dá chur i dtuiscint / D’fhear an meisce a droch-phoíntí.

‘The man who is always drunk / And the woman who is half crazy / And the mad woman / Telling the drunken man his bad points.’

Mr. John O’Donovan of Castlehaven N.S. included the following story in the Irish Schools Folklore Collection of 1938, which I have translated as follows:-

A certain problem was presented to learned men in Dublin. Since they could not solve it they sent a scholar to Seán Ó Coileáin. When the scholar reached Union Hall he went in to a public house. The innkeeper was talking to a man who had the appearance of a spailpín (wandering labourer). The man from Dublin asked the innkeeper where Séan Ó Coileáin lived. The spailpín told him that he was living near Ó Coileáin and that he would accompany him to the house. As they proceeded towards the Lackareagh, the scholar outlined the problem to his companion. Nothing further was said until they reached a heap of sand. With the point of a stick, by the light of the moon, the spailpín solved the problem. [mathematical?]

Then it struck the scholar that his companion was no ignorant spailpín but Séan Ó Coileáin himself. And he was right.

In the School Folklore Collection of Union Hall (1938), the Principal, Tomás Ó’Donnabháin, included most of a long poem in English entitled ‘Cuchulainn and Cinnlaoch’ attributed to Séan Máistir. Mr O’Donovan states that his father had many stories about Ó Coileáin and that he knew many of his poems. He mentions one other, ‘Eachtra Chapaill an Chuimín’, which was known in English as ‘The Sorrel Nag’.

Séamus Mac Cártaigh, Principal of Knockskeagh, N.S. Leap, includes a poem attributed to Ó Coileáin, which he transcribed from Tadhg Ó Muirthile, of Kilfadeen, Leap. There is an Irish and English version of the poem, ‘My Sweet Cailín Fionn’ – (My Sweet Fair-haired Girl). It is a lyrical description of a beautiful girl with  whom Ó Coileáin fell in love. This is the final verse in English:

‘No black, no brown will please me / Her sorrel will not tease me / There’s no colours there to tease me / But the fair one that’s true. / With her curling locks so amazing / Made thousands stand out gazing / And why shouldn’t I be praising / My sweet Cailín Fionn.’

In his ‘Love-Letter’ to Margaret, full of exaggeration and ‘flowery’ language, the poet seems to set out to dazzle and impress his beloved abstruse. A few lines will suffice.

‘Most adorable Miss Margaret, the super-eminence of your super abundant pulchritude, the bright effulgence and dazzling irradiation of your azure luminaries, together with the sapient sanity and ratiocination of your analogical mind, totally ignified my macerated microcosm…’

The bardic tradition goes back to pre-Christian Celtic Gaul and classical Gaelic poetry continued to be composed up to the middle of the 17th century. The defeat at Kinsale (1601) struck the death knell of the bardic order and ultimately to the almost complete annihilation of Irish tradition, culture and language one rate following centuries, its end hastened more rapidly by the Great Famine of 1845-49. In the old order the Bard or ‘file’ was highly respected, acclaimed and even feared because of their power with words. The Gael loved words. Even today, old men like Neilly Bohane of Dromadoon near Lough Ine, Skibbereen, Jerry O’Mahony of Dooneen, Castlehaven and Paddy Hurley of Kilfadeen, Leap, for example, can recite dozens of poems, mostly in English. Their love of English shines through.

In the folklore of West Cork the poet was attributed with great, even magical power. Both Séan Máistir and Micheál Chormaic Ó Súilleabháin were attributed with the power to banish rats. Micheál Chromic drove them out of Abbeystrewery graveyard, Skibbereen and Séan Máistir banished them from Myross graveyard.

Séan Máistir Ó Coileáin was buried in Rossmore Old Graveyard. A Celtic Cross, now weathered and lichen-covered, was erected over his grave in 1910.

In the past the marriage banns were read from the altar by the priest on three consecutive Sundays. These called on the faithful to come forward and declare if they knew of any impediments to the proposed marriage.

The bride never saw her groom after midnight on the wedding day. In weddings of the distant past, the bride left for the church mounted behind her father on a horse. She returned on her husband’s mount. Young men who had been invited to the wedding joined in ‘res na mbuidéal’ (the bottle race). They galloped through the fields and the first one at the church received a bottle of whiskey or poitín. With the advent of horse-drawn vehicles, the bride and her father left their home in the family trap. Their relatives followed and friends along the route joined the cavalcade. The groom, in his family’s trap, came last. Sometimes, musicians played in traps or even led the processions.

The wedding feast took place in the bride’s home. As the bride entered the home, her mother broke a light cake over her daughter’s head to ensure a life of plenty. The wedding feast lasted all evening and night; often the guests didn’t leave until the following morning.

In less affluent times, many households could only afford to invite close relatives, so mischievous, adventurous youths hid their features under long conical straw hats and gate-crashed the celebrations. The tradition developed and these ‘straw-boys’ became a feature of weddings. They wove ornamentations in their hats and tucked straw into their waist belts before grabbing musical instruments and arriving with great hilarity into the home. They were tolerated for the entertainment they provided. The group always included a seanbhean gáiritheach (laughing old woman) and a seanfhear saibhir (wealthy old man) and, at the height of the celebrations they would, respectively, dance with the groom and the bride. This would pass on to the couple long life, with a fair share of wealth and happiness. In some parts of Munster, the entertainment provided by the straw boys was called ‘bococking’ because a bacach (lame person) in the cast provided most of the fun. If the hosts did not treat the straw boys well, they climbed on to the roof and covered the chimney with sacks to smoke out the wedding party.

One old tradition states ‘marry in May and rue the day’ while another states ‘marry in April if you can, joy for maiden and for man’. Another custom was called ‘aitin (eating) the gander’ where the groom was invited to the bride’s house the day before the wedding and a goose was cooked in his honour. This is where we get the expression ‘his goose is cooked’! it was considered unlucky to marry on a Saturday and those who married in harvest would spend their time gathering. It was thought to be lucky to get married during a ‘glowing moon or a flowing tide’.

‘Would you like to be buried with my people?’ was an unromantic form of proposal, but if a young bride died, it was the custom to bury her with her own people. This may have happened to avoid embarrassment in the event of her husband remarrying and burying another wife.

Brides often carried a real horseshoe for luck, turned up so the luck would not run out. In olden days, couples ate oatmeal and salt at the start of the wedding reception when each would eat three spoonfuls as protection against the ‘evil eye’.

Mead was one of the oldest drinks in Ireland and it was traditionally drunk at weddings to promote virility. It was also drunk from special goblets a month after the wedding – ‘mí na meala’ (honeymoon). Traditionally this was to offer protection from the fairies coming to spirit the bride away and is where we get today’s ‘honeymoon’ from.

There are many proverbs in Irish concerning love and marriage. Here is an interesting one: ‘Is flame, fear teach gan bean’ (empty and cold is a house without a woman). A few other examples include: ‘Nil aon leigheas ar ghrá ach pósadh’ (There is no cure fr love except marriage). ‘Níl lia ná leigheas in aghaid an ghrá (there is no physician or cure for love).

At the wedding feast (bainis) a common toast was: ‘Slíocht sleachta ar shlioch bhur sleachta’ (may you have children and your children have children). Another proverb advises against marrying for money: An té a phósann an t-airgead, pósfaidh sé óinseach; imeoidh an t-airgead agus fanfaigh sn t-óinsaeach (the one who marries money gets a fool for a wife. The money will go but the fool will remain).

We also know that some of his manuscripts were written in Rosscarbery and that he was friendly with the poet, Diarmuid Ó Dálaigh, from that parish. The so-called hedge schools weren’t permanent; often the teacher taught only in the summer months. So it is possible that Ó Coileáin lived for periods in Rosscarbery. However, folklore connects him almost exclusively with Myross, so it was there, almost certainly, he spent most of his life.

He married a Coughlan girl from the area and they had either three or four children. Séan had the reputation of being “a bit of a ‘réice’ (rake)”; he used to be ‘árramhachán’ carousing in Union Hall, Leap, Rosscarbery and Skibbereen, sometimes not returning to his school for weeks. About a half-mile north of Stookeen Church there was a ‘síbín’ (shebeen) called Poll’s Shebeen where he used to drink. His wife, tired of his irresponsible behaviour, left him and returned to her own family. Séan was soon living with his wife’s sister, with whom he had a daughter. This relationship was also unhappy, probably because of Séan’s behaviour; so angry was she that one day, when Séan had gone missing again, she burned down the house, undoubtedly containing Séan’s books and manuscripts.

In 1814, when he was 60, Séan moved to Skibbereen, where he lived with his daughter (by his second wife). She had married an O’Driscoll man and lived in High Street. Séan Máistir (Master John), as he was always called, taught here for a few years and here he died on April 18, 1817. Séan Ó Driscoll, grandson of Séan Máistir, taught a school in Skibbereen for a while. He became involved in the Fenian Movement with O’Donovan Rossa. Apparently, he lost his job and emigrated to the USA, where he died about 1891. This man or his brother told Peadar Ó hAnnrachain that many of his grandfather’s books and manuscripts were stolen the night of his wake.

In all only eleven complete manuscripts of Ó Coileáin survive, nine of which were written between 1773 and 1781, a copy of his famous poem, ‘Macnamh an Duine Dhoilíosaigh’ that he sent to the poet Donncha Ó Floinn in Cork and some notes that are in the British Library in London. We know that he visited other poets, particularly Micheál Óg Ó Longáin (1766-1837), Donncha Ó Floinn and Séan Ó Mulláin, all from the Cork city area. We also know that Ó Longán and Ó Floinn borrowed manuscripts from him. We know that Ó Longáin visited Ó Coileáin in Myross and that he composed a ‘tuireamh or marbhna’ (lament) for him when he died. Another poet who composed a lament was Dónal Ó hIarfhlaighte (Donal Herlihy) who lived in Rosscarbery.

His fame as a poet, teacher, scholar and wit spread all over Carbery during his lifetime and his poems and doings were kept alive in the oral literature (béaloideas) well into the 20th century, as we have seen. It is said that scholars came from all over Carbery to his school; one of them, Donncha Ó Seachnasaigh from Reavouler, parish of Kilmacabea, became a well-known poet himself and he also wrote a lament for Séan Máistir. Daniel Donovan, in ‘Sketches in Carbery’, refers to him as “The Silver Tongue of Munster”. The great scholar John O’Donovan, translator of the ‘Annals of the Four Masters’, described  Ó Coileáin “as the last scholar, poet and historiographer of Carbery”. There were many other poets in West Cork in that era and later but none reached the excellence of Ó’Coileáin’s best work.

He is best known as the authors of two great poems, ‘Macnamh an Duine Dhoilíosaigh’ (The Musing of a Melancholy Man), also known as ‘Caoineadh Tig Molaga’ (Lament for Timoleague Abbey) and ‘An Buachaill Bán’ (The Fair-haired Boy). He translated ‘The Exile of Erin’ by Campbell into Irish and translated ‘Agallamh an othair leis an mBás’ (The Dialogue of the Patient with Death) into English) into English. Among his other writings which survive are: 1. A small Irish grammar, entitled ‘The Elements of the Irish Language’. 2. A dialogue on the invention of letters and the Commencement of the Irish Language. 3. A book on Ogham entitled ‘Of the cryptography or sacred and mysterious writing of the Irish called Ogham’.

He was also interested in history, folklore and genealogy. He wrote an account of the McCarthys of Gleann a Chroim, a branch of the McCarthy Reaghs, whose territory was in the Dunmanway area. He also wrote a history of the genealogy of the O’Donovan clan, particularly the Clan Cahill branch, on whose ancient territory he resided, their main castles being in Castledonovan near Drimoleague, Rahine in Myross and ‘Cloch an tSráid Bhaile’ (Glandore Castle). He entitled this work ‘O’Donovan’s pedigree, from the earliest accounts to the present time, collected from the public records, authentic manuscripts, well-attested pedigrees and personal information. By John Collins, antiquarian.’ He had begun to write a history of Ireland in Irish and had done some work on an English-Irish dictionary.

He also wrote poems of lesser quality than his great poems; among these are ‘O Mo Lao, mo chailín’ (O, my love, my girl) and ‘Bláth na Gréine’ (Myross Wood). In English he wrote ‘The Battle of Ross’ and ‘Sweet Castletownshend Demense’. There are many other short pieces in Irish and English, which the old seanchaithe (storytellers) could relate. These lived on in oral literature. Some were written down, but undoubtedly, many went unrecorded and were forgotten. Much of his work must have been destroyed when his house burnt down.

The ‘Machamh’ influenced the Anglo Irish writers of the 19th century; both James Clarence Mangan and Samuel Ferguson translated it into English.

In the poem he contrasts the former glory of Timoleague Abbey with its ruinous state in his lifetime. His passionate feeling, the clarity and fluency of language with which he describes the fate of the Abbey is very powerful and any translation could not do it justice. In the last three verses he comments on his own life and draws parallels between the Abbey’s decline with his own life. Once he was happy and full of life, but now he is old and poor. This is the final verse, followed by Ferguson’s translation:

Atá duaireas ar mo dhreach, / Atá mo chroí ‘na chrotal cnó. / Dá bhfóireadh orm an bás / Ba dhearbh m’fháilte faoine chomhair.’

Woe is written on my visage. / In a nut my heart would lie / Death’s deliverance were welcome- / Father, let the old man die.

Doubt has been expressed about Ó Coileáin’s authorship of the ‘Macnamh’. He was known to be a traditionalist, but it is in this knowledge that the Lament is found wanting. Ó Coileáin would have known of the history of the Abbey and its connection with the McCarthys. Such learning was native to Irish poetry of that era, but not a word is found in the lyrics about the history of the Abbey. The late Pádraig Ó Maidín wrote an exploratory three-part essay in ‘Agus’ (November and December 1962 and January 1963) win which he explores the arguments for and against Ó Coileáin’s authorship. O Maidín concludes that O Coileáin did write the poem. Fr Matt Horgan, who was a priest in Myross and a friend of O Coileáin, visited Timoleague Abbey for the first time on January 14, 1846 and he wrote a letter to the Cork Examiner the following day under the pen-name ‘Viator’. At the end of the letter he wrote: “Timoleague Abbey has been celebrated in recent years by my old, and alas, I must say it, late friend, John Collins, of Myross, one of the best Irish scholars and poets of late times. His musings in the deserted aisles of this ruined Convent are among the finest verses I am acquainted with; they may be seen in Hardiman’s Irish Minstrelsy and are to the Irish scholar what Gray’s Elegy is to the English. It is a fine, solemn and affecting piece of reflective poetry.

Since the ‘Macnamh’ is so unlike the rest of Ó Coileáin’s writings, it has been suggested that it was a once-off effort, prompted by Ó Coileáin’s reading of Gray’s Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, which he probably got from the same Fr. Horgan, who challenged him to write something similar in Irish. “If this is so, the Macnamh is just as Irish as Gray’s is English,” writes Daniel Corkery.

The faded glory of Timoleague Abbey described in the Macnamh aptly symbolises the decay of language and culture all over Carbery, indeed over the whole country. The poets that followed Ó’Coileáin, with no patronage, little or no education and a dying language, strove to keep alive the tradition of poetry but they never reached the perfection of Ó Coileáin’s best work. One can only reflect regretfully on the vast wealth of song, folklore and oral literature that disappeared in the rapid retreat of Irish, particularly after the Famine. We must be grateful to people like Peadar Ó hAnnracháin and Micheál Ó Cuileanáin, to name but two, who gathered as much as they could.

to be continued…

Unlike their predecessors, the poets were peasants – labourers or wandering schoolmasters. But, as Corkery observes, they never thought of themselves as peasants; they thought of themselves as poets. They were the sons of learning, carrying on the tradition of the great bardic schools and the later Courts of Poetry. They knew that they were the inheritors of a thousand years of organised bardic poetry. The Cromwellian was not a poet. Poetry he could not understand, nor even the need for it. He was not fit to be named in one breath with the Gael, on whom he trampled. The Gaels were “children of kings, sons of Melesius” and they knew it. The poems of the great writers Aodhagán Ó Rathaille and Eoghan Rua O’Suilleabháin, almost two hundred years after their creation, were found alive in the mouths of farmers and fishermen. The poems of Séan Ó Coileáin were still remembered a century and a half later by old people in Carbery – at least by one – Tadhg Ó Muirthile (1850-1940) of Kilfadeen, Leap.

In one of Eoghan Rua O’Suilleabháin’s poems, the spirit of Ireland recalls her great past when her lot was chieftainship and feasting ‘le seascaireach ceoil’ (with the comfort of music). The comfort of music – the one phrase to denote the excelling charm in his own verse, the exact phrase to describe what it was he gave his down-trodden and hungry people, endearing himself to them despite his wild ways. A reckless genius, the words that flew from his lips were pure music. No wonder he soon became known as ‘Eoghan an Bhéil Bhinn (Eoghan of the sweet mouth).

Séan Ó Coileáin, or Seán Máistir (Master John) as he was called by his contemporaries, had much in common with Eoghan Rua. They were contemporaries but almost certainly never met; they were both reckless and daring, fond of drink and women, but they were loved “for their wit, for the music that flowed from their mouths”. O’Coileáin ‘the Silver Tongue of Munster and Eoghan Run of the ‘Sweet Mouth’. The music of words – that’s what both gave their listeners – the sweet music of words that uplifted burdened minds and hearts, if only for a short while.

Little is known of O’Coileáin’s life or work from his own writing or from that of his contemporaries. However, his poems, stories and anecdotes about his life lived on in West Carbery well into the 20th century. For instance, in 1938, when the National School Folklore was being collected, Tadhg  Ó Muirthile of Kilfadeen, Leap, then 88, could recite many of his poems an tell stories about O’Coileáin’s life to local teachers like Séan O’Donovan of Kilmacabea NS, Leap, James McCarthy of Knockskeagh NS, Leap and Pádraig Ó Conaill, Irish teacher from Myross. He also features strongly in the folklore of the primary schools in Maulatrahane, Union Hall, Castlehaven and Rosscarbery.

The main sources for this article are (a) the folklore collected in the above schools, (b) an essay written by Peadar Ó hAnnracháin in ‘Irisleabhar na Gaeilge’ (The Gaelic Journal) (c) an essay in Scríobhaithe Chorcaí 1700-1850 by Buachalla (James Buckley), now in the National Library of Ireland and used as a source by Ó Conchúir.

Séan Ó Coileáin’s father’s people were from the area between Drimoleague and Dunmanway and his mother’s people, Muintir Anglainn (Anglin) were resident “west of Drimoleague”, probably in Caheragh parish. His father had a farm in Ballygurteen, near Killeen, where Séan was born in 1754. It appears that the family were evicted when Séan was young and that his father died soon afterwards. His mother took Séan back to her own people where she rented a house. According to Peadar Ó hAnnracháin, she also died young, and it was his mother’s family who reared him and gave him whatever education was available.

It is said that he spent some time in a seminary in Spain or France, preparing to be a priest. The only certain fact about this period of his life is found in his manuscripts, where he states that he spent four months in a seminary in Coimbra, Portugal.

He never completed his training for the priesthood  and, after returning from the Continent, he headed south toward the sea and settled in the parish of Myross, “garraí na Mumhain”, as he himself described it. According to one story in folklore, he met some people from Myross at Rosscarbery Fair and they persuaded him to establish a school in Myross. He rented a little house here and set up a school in ‘aice le Séipéal an Stúicín ar bharr na Ceapaí (near Stookeen Church at the height of Cappagh). Cappagh is east of Rineen, overlooking the inlet of Castlehaven harbour between Union Hall and Castletownsend. The ruins of Stuicín church are still to be seen. West of the church on the wooded slope called the Lackareagh (Leaca Riabhach, the grey or striped slope) he had his school. There is a cliff here called ‘Faill an fhiáin dris (the cliff of the wild briar), near the top of which is ‘Leaba Sheáin Uí Choileáin’ (the bed of Seán Ó Coileáin). Here he used to meditate and compose poems as he tells us himself.

‘Is socair, is sámh, is sásta chodlas aréir / I leaba glan árd faoi scáth agus fothain na gcraobh, / Crann crithir agus déil agus craobh glas den chuileann mar dhíon / Agus duilliúir na gcraobh mar éadach leaapan fém cheann.’

(It’s comfortable, cosy and satisfied I slept last night / In a clean high bed beneath the shade and shelter of the branches, / Aspen and deal and green-branched holly my roof / And the trees’ foliage as a pillow under my head).

To be continued….

It is a historical fact that the potato, more than any other crop, dominated the farming system of Ireland in general, and of West Cork in particular, all through the 19th century and indeed well into the 20th. The early variety in those days was either the ‘Red Elephant’ or the ‘Epicure’ and the beautiful yellow-tinted ‘Champion’ was the main crop, a potato of such perfection for table use that its equal has never since appeared despite the obvious attraction of ‘Kerr’s Pinks’ and the ‘Golden Wonder’ in our own time.

The potatoes were usually sown in a sound ‘bán’ (lea) field and the fences cleared of all bushes and briars. Several cartloads of farmyard manure was drawn out and spread over the field, manure that had accumulated during the previous winter when the cattle had been housed at night, their stalls cleaned out each morning and spread over the ‘aiteann Gaelach’ (Irish furze) and ‘raithineach’ (ferns) that had been cut and deposited over part of the farmyard. On Heir Island and the other islands of Roaringwater Bay and along the coast, seaweed was gathered from the strands and cut from the rocks, drawn to the fields in baskets on a donkey’s back. Each landholder had their section of shore marked, where they were allowed cut the ‘feamainn’ (seaweed).

With the manure spread over the surface the ploughing of the ridges began. At that time potatoes were grown exclusively in ridges, as they had been for more than a century before. The idea of sowing them in drills came in some time later. On Heir Island there was a practice of using three donkeys to plough. The next job was an exacting one, the hacking of the ridges, always with a ‘grafán’ – a type of strong hoe, no longer used. It was back-breaking, back-bending work.

The seed potatoes or sciolláns, as they were called, were cut, so that from a single potato you might get two or three seed. I can still clearly remember my parents cutting the ‘sciolláns’. After this was done the potatoes would be set. A pouch was fashioned from a half-sack meal bag in such a way that you had a very serviceable much into which you put the ‘sciolláns’ for planting. The pouch was called a ‘púca’ (pooka) which, of course, is also the Irish for a ghost. The hole for the ‘sciollán’ was made by a spade and the ‘sciolláns’ dropped into it, usually five ‘sciolláns’ across the width of the ridge. Closing the holes was done with a ‘pucadóir’ (also called a fairichín), which was a short block of timber with a handle attached.

Three weeks after came the first ‘earthing’ when earth from the furrows between the ridges was shovelled onto the ridge. Two weeks later the stalks appeared and two weeks after that the second earthing was done. The potatoes were usually sprayed against blight at least three times; this was a solution of blue-stone and washing soda, usually before blossoming, a fortnight after blossoming and a third spray in late July.

Digging the potatoes in ridges was done by a spade. The farmer dug them and they were picked into buckets and all the collected potatoes put in a pit. The pickers had to segregate the white potato from the black rotten ones, the fully developed potato from the ‘criochán’ (small potatoes). The half-criocháns were collected later and boiled for the pigs.

The potato-pit was a source of wonder and admiration for those who could never make one themselves. A well-made pit started as a shallow trench somewhere in the field. The potatoes were neatly traced up into a long narrow ridge-like pile, tapering evenly from ground level to a sharp-edged top. They were carefully covered with straw, or more often with ‘luachair’ rushes that grew in every big in West Cork. Then the real working began, the art of earthing the pit, with shovelful after shovelful of loose earth piled with eight inches deep over the potatoes, the two sides of the pit being built up at the same time until they met at the top in a perfect edge. Then the whole pit was patted smooth with the back of the shovel and the potatoes were safer than they would ever be in a house. The farmer usually took pride in his work – the potato pit had to be made skilfully; the rick of corn, the rick of hay, all were fashioned like works of art.

Patrick Kavanagh, the greatest poet of rural Ireland, mentions the potato-pit in his lovely nostalgic poem ‘A Christmas Childhood’: ‘One side of the potato-pits was white with frost / How wonderful that was, how wonderful!’

In ‘Spraying the Potatoes’, he writes: ‘The barrels of blue potato-spray stood on a headland of July and / The flocks of green potato-stalks / Were blossom spread for sudden flight, / The Kerr’s Pinks in a frilled blue, / The Arran Banners wearing white.

Many of the wines and other home brews were said to have curative powers. Dandelion coffee, made from the roots or leaves of the dandelion, was said to be a cure for bed-wetting; mixed with whiskey it was used by people with chest complaints. Cowslip wine was said to be good for the complexion. In Cork a tea made from boiling wild carrots was used for rheumatism. One of the most popular drinks all over the country was made from bogbean, known as ‘báchrán’ or bahrams. In Donegal they said: “Drink bahrams in March and nettles in Mye (May) and you’ll not need a doctor till the day you die.” Roots of the bogbean, which are white, run underground and have small stems. In the month of March it was usual to dig up the roots and clean them in water. They were then boiled and sugar was added to taste. It was a drink guaranteed to clear the blood. In folklore collected in the 1930s, bogbean juice (leaves boiled) was said to be good for the kidneys, valuable for rheumatism, skin diseases, constipation and as a tonic.

Young nettles, particularly in May, were boiled and used as a blood cleanser. Boiled nettles are also said to be good for rheumatism and bronchitis.

Tea was introduced to Ireland in the early part of the 18th century, and like coffee and chocolate, was first drunk only by the wealthy and leisured. It took over a century for it to become part of the staple diet of the Irish people. A breakfast of tea and white bread was considered a luxury well into the middle of the 19th century and given only to important visitors. In William Carleton’s pre-famine story, ‘Going to Maynooth”, the obnoxious Denis O’Shaughnessy, conscious of his exalted status as a clerical student, announces to his unfortunate father: “In future I’m resolved to have a ‘tay’ breakfast every morning.”

Times were hard and tea was bought sparingly, if at all. In folklore collected in the 1930s, an informant in Co. Sligo recalls that long ago tea was bought only for Christmas. A half-ounce was used, and the remainder kept until Easter. Stories are told of the confusion over methods of preparation that arose when tea was first introduced. A story from Co. Wexford highlights this: “When tea first came to these parts they never used the liquid. After brewing, the liquid was thrown out and the leaves spread on bread with milk to drink.” Up to the middle of the last century, tea came in large chests and was weighed by the shopkeeper. Unlike today, when everything is packaged, many goods came loose and were packed and weighed in the shop.

Like many itinerant traders, the ‘tay’ man was a familiar figure in the Irish countryside, going from house to house selling ‘spills’ of tea. In the west of Ireland he is remembered best as ‘Seáinin a ’tae’ (Seán of the tea). There is a rueful Irish proverb: ‘Marbh ag tae is marbh gan é’ (dead from tea and dead from the lack of it). During World War II when many goods had to be rationed, tea and tobacco were solely missed.

Tea was considered a luxury in many parts of Ireland in the 19th century and was given to servant boys and labouring men on Sundays and Church holidays as a special treat. Folklore collected in Kerry describes: “All the payment a man might ask for jobs such as helping with a litter of pigs was a good fire, the tea and a teapot under his arm. Women who arrived to do such work as plucking geese, cutting seed (i.e. for potato farming) or washing clothes would refuse to stay unless they were assured of the odd smoke and tea served several times a day.” The tin can made by the local tinsmith with a handle on one side made do for a teapot in many homes. The teapot was seldom out of the ‘gríosach’ or ashes, and tea might be brewed up to ten times a day. It wasn’t considered worth drinking unless it was so strong that “you could dance a mouse on it.”

The tea on the draw, the ever-ready offer of a cup to a neighbour, was a sign of hospitality. Bargaining at a fair generally needed the help of a go-between, who might say to a reluctant buyer: “Make the deal, be a decent man. You come of good stock. Sure your mother never took the teapot from the fire.”

In another story, ‘The Wooing of Éadaoin’, we read how the High King Eochaidh made a great feast at Tara at which mead, fine wines and barrels of ale were served. The two tales tell us the kind of food and drink served at princely banquets.

Mead was a favourite drink in ancient Ireland, said to be both potent and delicious. It was made from honey, clear sparkling water and aromatic herbs. ‘Bragget’, made by fermenting ale and honey together, was also much enjoyed, as it is frequently mentioned. Bees were kept in very great numbers and to have a surplus of honey for mead-making was highly desirable. St. Bridget, that redoubtable woman who knew how to influence prelates and princes, is said to have given the King of Leinster a cup of mead to drink when he came to visit her convent in Kildare. it was of unsurpassed quality and no doubt very strong as well. As a result of her hospitality the king gave her a tract of land and gifts she needed for her work among the sick and needy. She was noted for the excellence of her food, and had the reputation of brewing the best ale in Ireland. She was not the only one of the early saints who kept a good cask or two. St. Patrick is said to have had his favourite brewer travel Ireland with him in his missionary work.

Anyone who wished to do so was free to brew his own ale, but the Brehon laws laid down regulations for the sale of ale and for the proper running of ale-houses. Early monastic settlements were sizeable, including, as they did, not only the refectory, kitchens and dormitories for the monks, but workshops, bakeries and accommodation to house lay workers and their families, visiting penitents, students, and indeed anyone who might seek shelter. It was laid down, that on feast days, laymen and clerics should get equal quantities of food; the monks were allowed three pints of ale, with six for the laymen.

Much of the early ale was made from malted grain – oats, wheat or barley – together with spring water and honey. Before the introduction of hops in the 16th century, beer, like ale, made with a simple infusion of fermented malt, was flavoured with aromatic plants. Oak bark is said to have been used for this purpose, as well as buck beans. It was not until around 1780 that beer began to be produced on a commercial scale by small breweries, made from a mixture of malt, grain, water, sugar, yeast and hops. Practically every town had its brewery, some of which were still open in the early 20th century. Examples in West Cork included McCarthy’s of Skibbereen and Deasy’s of Clonakilty, who made a famous stout called Wrestler (pronounced Wrastler).

The ancient Irish drank a cider called ‘nenadmin’ made from crab apples, and also a drink called ‘fraochán’ made from whortleberries and blackberries.

From earliest times there was considerable trade with the Continent, particularly France and Spain. Furs and hides were exported and back came cargoes of wine and brandy, as these drinks were very popular among wealthy merchants. 

One story tells of how a 13th century West Cork chieftain, Amhlaoibh Ó hEidirsceoil (O’Driscoll today), was given his nickname. One day, as a young boy, he was down at the harbour watching the ships when he was abducted by a rival chieftain and handed over to the crew of a wine ship from Gascony as a pledge of payment for cargo. He was taken to France and put to work in the vineyards, thereby giving credence to the old belief that fruit grew without blemish if the vines were tended by those of noble blood. Later the youth returned to Ireland and ever afterwards bore the nickname ‘the Gascon’.

Not all drink consumed was come by honestly. Frequently the Irish chieftains levied ‘black rents’ on the Pale (the district around Dublin). In 1444, Eoghan O’Neill, Lord of Tyrone, plundered the town of Dundalk and demanded sixty marks and two tons of wine in return for not destroying the town by fire – a demand that was quickly met by the frightened townsfolk.

A brisk trade in smuggling wine and fine brandy along the western seaboard lasted until well into the 19th century. Smuggling was a hazardous occupation, but for some it was a way of surviving and even of amassing a fortune. The fame and wealth of some Irish families, such as the O’Connells of Derrynane, Co. Kerry – the household that bred the Liberator, Daniel O’Connell – was founded on smuggling. This included some West Cork families, such as the Deasys of Clonakilty.

The ever-changing moon was an object of mystery and superstition in Ireland. The old Celtic druids placed great emphasis on the moon and arranged their calendar by it. It was believed that any work or business undertaken when the moon was growing (waxing) would be successful. Work begun when the moon was waning was considered less likely to succeed. A child born when there was a new moon was thought to have good prospects for health and wealth.

It was considered good practice to set seeds (potatoes, grain crops, etc) as the moon waxed. Scallops for thatching the roof were cut as the moon increased, thereby ensuring their continued strength. An indirect benefit of the waning moon was that body sores were believed to decrease in size during that period and warts might disappear altogether.

Pigs and sheep were usually killed while the moon was waxing – “the bacon or mutton would swell in the boil”. People were much more inclined to spare their money, as the moon filled, and to spend it, as the moon waned.

The eternal return of the moon was naturally something mysterious and attracted much attention. There was a saying about the new moon; “On the first night nobody sees it, on the second night, the birds see it, and on the third night, everybody sees it.” Its coming was not greeted without apprehension and people were advised to make the Sign of the Cross when they first noticed it. A prayer might also be said, such as, “God Bless the Moon and God Bless Me, I see the moon and the moon sees me”. There was a strong country tradition that with the coming of the new moon, people would kneel and pray for health, wealth and good fortune. A 17th century German writer wrote: “The wild Irish (sic) have this custom, that when the new moon is new they squat upon their knees and pray to the moon that it may leave them vigorous and healthy.”

The heave and pull of the moon

It was claimed in folklore that Aristotle failed to understand only three things – the work of the bees, the coming and going of the tide and the mind of a woman. Whatever about the other two, ordinary people understood that the tides had some connection with the moon and this provided proof of the ubiquitous lunar influences. Contemplating the connection between the sea and the moon, folklore developed some dramatic ideas. One such was that all water reacts in the same way as the sea, that rivers swelled with the full moon, or that water placed in a dish will rise and overflow as the full moon is seen to rise. At the same time, the blood becomes invigorated and a person feels his strength increase.

It was believed that the energy caused by the full moon in all its strength could be overpowering to the human spirit and that a person, over-elated by it, might lose his wit for a while. Such a person was said to have gone ‘le gealaí’ (with the moon). In English, we have the word ‘lunatic’ from the Latin for moon, ‘Luna’. The word ‘moonstruck’ has the same connotation.

The markings on the moon were interpreted as being the body of  a man who was transported there from the earth. We have all heard about ‘the man in the moon’. It was often held that a full moon on Saturday was a sign of bad weather or some other local misfortune. The idea that the moon’s waxing and waning directly affects the growing and shrinking of earthly living things was also applied to humans. Hair should be cut when the moon is waxing to ensure subsequent growth. In the Orkney and Shetland islands, it was widely believed that marriages should take place when the moon was waxing.

It was believed that sleeping directly under moonlight had negative consequences for humans. At best, it could bring bad luck and bad dreams; at worst, it made humans prone to stammering, blindness, paralysis or idiocy. It was thought unlucky to see the new moon through glass; the best way to see it was over the right shoulder.

The appearance of the moon is also used to forecast the weather. A ring around the moon is a portent of bad weather; it used to be called ‘súil circe ré’ (the moon of the hen’s eye) on Cape Clear. When the sickle moon appears to be lying on its back, it is a sign of very ‘broken’ weather. The old people, especially fishermen or farmers, observed all natural phenomena closely and were very accurate in predicting weather.

Matheson and Ó Murchadha in combination provide 54 Cork surnames, but even that list excludes a plethora of surnames, both indigenous to Co. Cork and relatively numerous common names not included include Linehan, Horgan, Lucey, Coakley, Dennehy, Deasy, Keohane and Minihane, to mention but a few.

Matheson identifies 16 surnames, which appear in the 1890 birth indexes for Co. Cork only. These Cork-only names include Anglin, Bransfield, Dullea, Lordan, Motherway, Santry – all surnames that are still extant but not numerous in Co. Cork.

The earliest people to inhabit South-West Cork were the ‘Corca Laidhe’ (Corcalee) whose chieftain, ‘Lughaidh Laidhe’, at one time ruled the area from Kinsale to Kenmare Bay. The strongest family of the Corcalee were the O’Driscolls, who are still numerous in the area.

Strangely, the second most powerful were the O Cowhigs (also anglicised as Coffee), a name very rare in the area now. Other family names of the Corca Laidhe include O’Leary, Cronin, Murphy, O’Keeffe, Duggan etc.

Several of the most common, numerous surnames are relative newcomers. When the O’Brien’s (Brian Boru’s clan) became very powerful in the 8th and 9th centuries, they put pressure on the Eoghanacht families of Cashel, who moved south and took much territory from the Corcalee. These families are known as the Eoghanacht because they claim descent from Eoghan Mór, king of Munster. These include the McCarthys, the O’Sullivans, the O’Mahonys and the O’Callaghans. The O’Sullivans gained possession of the Beara peninsula, the O’Mahonys, the Mizen Head peninsula. The McCarthys captured land all over County Cork, especially in West Cork, and became the strongest family up to the invasions in the years following 1169.

The O’Donovans were displaced from what is now County Limerick and, by the 13th century, had established themselves in West Cork. With them came the Connolly and Collins families, who were connected to them. The Crowleys, believed to be originally from Connacht, were likewise late arrivals who carved out a territory in the Dunmanway area of West Cork. The O Dalys, who were originally from what is now County Westmeath, dispersed; some settled in Galway, others in Clare, Kerry and Cork. The O Dalys were traditionally a bardic family; in West Cork, they established a bardic school near Kilcrohane on the Sheep’s Head peninsula.

The Norsemen (Vikings) raided Ireland over a period but some of them did settle in Ireland. Cotter (from MacOitir, son of Ottir) is now the only name of Viking origin numerous in County Cork. The Coppingers, for centuries a significant force in Cork history and also of Norse origin, are no longer numerous in Co. Cork. Libby Coppinger plays Gaelic football and camogie for Cork.

The Anglo-Normans first landed in 1169 and their influence is very significant. Walsh, Barry and Fitzgerald all feature in Matheson’s List of the most numerous surnames; other Norman surnames such as Roche, Condon, Barrett, Nagle and Cogan could not be excluded from the roll call of Cork names.

Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, plantations have added great variety to the range of Cork family names, however only one such surname, Kingston, can be considered very numerous in the county. None-the-less, surnames such as Good, Beamish, Swanton, Sweetnam and Shannon are still common amongst the farming and business communities of south-west Cork.

The decline, disappearance and survival of some of the more uncommon Cork surnames is an interesting study. Skiddy, a surname of Norse origin, prominent in Cork municipal office up to the 17th century, now appears to be extinct in County Cork. Hungerford, of plantation stock from the 17th century, appears to be extinct. Notter, a surname still prominent on the Mizen peninsula in the late 19th century, now appears to be gone. Shipley, a prominent name in Carbery’s Hundred Isles in Roaringwater Bay, in the early 20th century, has disappeared from West Cork, but is still found elsewhere.

Shipsey, incidentally, is given a most original, probably apocryphal derivation. according to West Cork tradition. The first Shipsey, the story goes, was a shipwrecked, foreign sailor, whose only intelligible words to his rescuers were ‘ship’ and ‘sea’, hence ship-say or ship-see.

An older name, still numerous in Co Cork is MacSweeney. The MacSweeneys were gallowglass (Irish, gallóglaigh) or professional soldiers who were first used by the Northern chieftains, MacDonnell, O’Donnell, O’Neill, etc; they were introduced from the North by the McCarthys and stayed there.

The wild fruit most frequently mentioned in our sources is the wild apple (fiaduball in old Irish; úll fiáin in modern Irish). Because of this the wild apple tree is included among the ‘seven nobles of the wood’ i.e. the seven most valuable trees. The other six are oak, ash, hazel, holly, yew and pine.

Archaeological evidence confirms that many kinds of wild fruit were consumed. Blackberry and elderberry seeds, dated by radio-carbon to the 8th or 9th centuries have been excavated at Scotch Street, Armagh. An 11th century pit in Winetavern St., Dublin, contained a large variety of wild fruit, including rowanberries, blackberries, wild apples, sloes, hips and haws. Acorns, normally valued as food for pigs, were consumed by humans when other more palatable food was in short supply.

The importance of the bilberry is clear. Seeds from the fruit (Irish ‘fraochán’, anglicised fraughan) are common in the excavations of Viking and Anglo-Norman Dublin. The townland of Frehanes in Rosscarbery parish, West Cork, is derived from ‘fraochán’. The last Sunday in July was, up to recent times, known as Bilberry Sunday, Fraughan Sunday or Garland Sunday. In Irish folklore there are vivid descriptions of people dancing, singing, making garlands, storytelling and gathering fraughans or bilberries at lakes, holy wells or more usually on hills or mountains. The last Sunday in July is still, of course, a day for climbing mountains or hills, the most famous being Croagh Patrick, Co. Mayo. Another plant related to the bilberry is the cranberry, which grows in bogs; it is known in Irish as ‘mónán’ or ‘mónóg’, which comes from ‘móin’, the Irish for bog.

It is likely that a wide range of wild herbs or roots were eaten in ancient Ireland, particularly in times of famine, and by landless people on the margins of society. Among these certainly were wild garlic (‘creamh’), also known as ramsons; watercress (‘biolar’); nettle (‘neantóg’) and wood sorrel (‘seamsóg’).

The roots of a number of wild plants were eaten; of these, the most prized seems to have been pignut (‘cúlarán’ in Irish, also known as ‘cnó arcáin’, ‘cnó milis’, ‘cnó talún’ etc), bitter vetch (‘corra meille) and silverweed (‘brioscán’). Wild garlic is a frequent plant of woods and damp shady places. It was a valuable food source and was prized for its medicinal properties. Garlic is rightly regarded as a great food and its wild variety is used today by many famous chefs. In Irish folklore, wild garlic was a metaphor for sharpness or bitterness. ‘Chomh searbh’ – ‘as bitter as wild garlic’ was a Donegal saying. Nevertheless, cloves of wild garlic were sometimes planted in the thatch over the door in Irish cottages for good luck. Its importance as a food can be gauged  by the old Irish Brehon laws, one of which was a fine of the value of two-and-a-half milch cows for taking wild garlic, seaweed or wild apples from private land without permission. In more recent times, in nineteenth century Ireland, wild garlic was often used to flavour butter instead of salt. In Irish folk medicine, wild garlic was highly valued as a preventative of infection, as well as a cure for coughs, colds and flu. It was also believed to clear the blood of impurities and wounds of infection, and to cure toothache.

Watercress was widely used and is mentioned in the 12th century poem attributed to ‘Suibhne Geilt’ (Mad Sweeney). He addresses this plant in the following way; ‘a bhiorair, a barrghlasáin, do bhrú thobair luin’ (o watercress, o green-topped one from the edge of the blackbird’s well).

Edible seaweeds were also collected by people along our shores and on the offshore islands. The inedible seaweeds were an important fertiliser by the sea and on the islands. On the islands of West Cork, each householder had a portion of the shore designated to them, as well as offshore rocks and skerries. Seaweeds used in human diet supply iodine, iron and other trace elements. In modern times, the best known edible seaweed is Carrageen Moss, full of useful medicinal and nutritional goodness. In ancient Ireland, the most prized was ‘duilesc’ (‘duileasc’ in modern Irish), generally anglicised ‘dulse’. It appears that is was hung up in a sheaf, from which a handful was taken as required. One verse in the tale ‘Cath Fionntrá’ (The Battle of Ventry), praises the sea produce of the islands of the south-west of Ireland. One verse goes like this: ‘Iascach mara muiride / a críchaib Baí is Béire, / medbán Faíde firglaine / duileasc a cuanaib Cléire (sea-fishing of the sea from the regions of Dursey and Beara, laver of truly clean Whiddy, pulse from the inlets of Cape Clear).

Some years ago, the sailor Tim Severin and his crew, sailed the voyage they believed that Brendan had travelled in the same type of boat. He described his travels in his book ‘The Brendan Voyage’, proving that it was possible that Brendan, and probably others, could have reached America. Brendan is associated particularly with West Kerry, where Mount Brandon is named after him. There is a statue of him in Bantry, West Cork, where he looks out over Bantry Bay.

We can be sure that there were Irish men out and about long before the great days of the missionaries. King Dáithí is said to have been killed by lightning near the Alps. Irish raiders often snatched young people from the West coast of Britain and sold them into slavery. The most famous captive, of course, was Patrick. Unknown to themselves these raiders changed the course of Irish history and indeed the history of other parts of Europe. We know him, of course, as St. Patrick, our patron saint, who is given the most credit for bringing Christianity to Ireland. We know very little of these earlier wanderers. But since St. Colmcille (also known as Columba) left his beloved Derry and settled on the island of Iona off the west coast of Scotland, we can follow the course of the endless stream of Irishmen to all parts of the globe. St Colmcille preached Christianity in Scotland and after him, many other holy men travelled to Europe to spread the message of Christ. Famous missionaries of the period after St. Patrick, include St. Columbanus, who taught in France and Italy, where he established the famous monastery of Bobbio. St. Gall preached in Switzerland, where the town of St. Gallan is named after him. Other famous missionaries include Fiacre, Killian, Aodán, Fursey, and so on. St Fiachra, for example, preached in France. The site at St. Fiacre’s hermit cell became the nucleus of the great Abbey of Bereuil. The Fiacre horse-cab in France was named after him. 

After the defeat of the Irish at the Battle of Kinsale (1601), a defeat that marked the beginning of the old Irish order, many of the Irish chieftains had to go into exile on the continent, mainly in Spain, France and Italy. The Northern chiefs, O’Neill, O’Donnell, Maguire and others found refuge in Europe. The West Cork chieftains, principally O’Driscoll, O’Mahony and O’Sullivan, had to leave. Many of them joined the armies of France, Spain and other European countries. Many of the Irish soldiers left after the defeat of King James by William of Orange. This event is known as the ‘Flight of the Wild Geese’. A few of the more famous were Lally, O’Mahony and, of course, Patrick Sarsfield, who died at the battle of Landon fighting for the French against the old enemy, England. It is said that his last words, as he saw his life-blood flowing away, were: ‘Would that this were for Ireland’.

As well as travelling abroad, people were moving about the home island too. Travel is so fast nowadays, getting to the destination as fast as possible is what interests most of us. In the old days it was different, the journey was interesting and exciting of itself and the wise traveller set out himself to enjoy every minute of it. Besides that there were many classes of people whose livelihood depended upon their moving from place to place. Take for instance, the bands of poets who imposed themselves on the kings and chieftains, eating a chief or nobleman out of house and home and then passing on to the next hospitable house with extravagant demands for bigger and better hospitality. If anyone refused their demands they composed satires on them – funny and malicious songs that were spread about from person to person to the eternal shame of the victim. No wonder that the chiefs of Ireland rose against them in the end and would have driven them out of the country, but for the intervention of St. Colmcille, himself a poet, who returned from Scotland to speak on the poets’ behalf and begged permission for them to stay, under promise of less demands.

Once upon a time there was a Corkman who vowed that he would never rest until he reached the end of the world. And so he travelled many a weary mile over land and sea until finally he reached a great wall that reached nearly to the sky. Up he climbed from crevice to crevice with his heart in his mouth until, at the very top, he found a Kerryman calmly seated, smoking his pipe and gazing wistfully into the intimate space beyond. This jocose story illustrates the Irish people’s love of travel.

In Irish folklore there is a well-known folk tale about a scholar named Mac Con Glinne. The story starts like this: ‘A great longing seized the mind of the scholar to follow poetry and to abandon his studies for he was tired of studying. This came into his mind on a Saturday night at Roscommon. So he sold what little belongings he had for two wheaten cakes and a cut of old bacon, which he put in his book-bag. And he shaped for himself on the same night, a pair of shoes of seven thicknesses of soft leather, and set out next day on his travels, finally saving the king of Munster from a hunger-demon, which gave him an insatiable hunger. He became rich and famous’.

In the penal times, when it was almost impossible to get any kind of education, there were many poor scholars on the road. If any of them heard of a good teacher, a priest, or a hedge- schoolmaster, he made his way to where the teacher lived, and began to study under him, working for a farmer and teaching the ABC to farmer’s children for his keep. Here in West Cork, the famous poet, Séan Ó Coileáin, had a famous school near Myross in Union Hall. Many scholars came from the neighbouring parishes to learn from him.

There were wandering musicians and ballad singers who went from fair to fair, sure of a night’s hospitality because of their art. Some of the became famous, like the great Turloch Ó Carolan, ‘the last of the bards’, who was a wonderful harper and composer of many fine tunes. Many of these were kept alive in memory and were taken down by music collectors like Canon Goodman. He and his like were made welcome at the houses of the gentry, not only the noble of the old Irish stock, but the newer landowners settled by Cromwell and King William of Orange. There were many notable pipers too and the fashionable gentlemen learned to play the pipes from them.

There were also travelling storytellers and they too were sure of a welcome. A person who couldn’t tell a story, sing or play an instrument, wasn’t as welcome as those who could. There is a tale of a poor simple fellow who had no song or story, and so was refused lodging at every house until he came to the house of a man who was ‘in league with the fairies’. The poor boy was given a bed, but he slept little. He spent the whole night in terror of corpses, coffins, graves and threats of horrible men. When the morning came, the man of the house said, in a kindly way, ‘Now boy, you’ll never again be refused a lodging, for you have a fine long story to tell after the night’.

Within the memory of our great grandparents, or later, there were many craftsmen on the roads, journeymen coopers, smiths, carpenters, saddlers, shoemakers, stonemasons and others. Tailors came and stayed in the house until all the clothes needed by the family were made; then they passed on to the next house. Wherever there was a big house or a church being built, you might see travelling stonemasons arriving and greeting the chief mason in the secret language of the craft. ‘Airing a soistiriú (a travelling mason) Muintria airig! Coistgrig éis!’ (God bless you mason, come in, boy.’) Sculptors and stone cutters went from job to job in the same way.

Another big section of wandering people was made up of the spailpíní, the migrating labourers from the western counties into Leinster, East Munster and East Ulster. In the spring, they came to the hiring fairs with the long spades over their shoulders, and in the autumn with their reaping hooks and scythes. Often they worked for the same farmer every year and the sons went to the same farms as their fathers. In the north-west, Donegal and Mayo particularly, the labourers or small farmers crossed to Scotland to find work on the big farms there. For example, the father of the popular singer, Daniel O’Donnell, spent about 10 months of every year, labouring in Scotland. This put great strain on the mothers who had to raise their families practically on their own. In Scotland and also in parts of northern England, their strength and skill, their music and merriment were highly valued.

The mortal wounds of Gaelic Ireland were inflicted at the battle of Kinsale in 1601, but the death agony was prolonged for all of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth and nineteenth in parts of the country.

The coming of the Anglo-Norman adventurers in the period 1169-1333 with their foreign language and their superior military might was to have a significant effect upon the fortunes of the Irish language, not because of any lasting damage they could inflict upon the Irish nation as a whole but because their persisting presence in the Pale meant that Ireland’s integrity as a country was compromised The descendants of the ‘Gall’, as the native Irish called the foreigners, may have become ‘Hibernians ipsis hiberniores’ (more Irish than the Irish themselves) but they represented a kind of colonial option which the Tudors and later dynasties were to take up. An edict of Henry VIII in 1542, after he had been proclaimed King of Ireland, made the first formal pronouncement about the Irish language since the Statutes of Kilkenny (1366) had attempted to prevent the greater Gaelicisation of the English colony. It enacted that ‘ the King’s true subjects, inhabiting this land of Ireland…shall use and speak commonly the English tongue and language’.

It was during the reign of Elizabeth I that the power of the Anglo-Irish earldoms was effectively destroyed and, with the so-called Flight of the Earls in 1607, Ulster, the last outpost of Gaelic civilisation, was left virtually leaderless. The poets, who had attached themselves to the Old Irish Chieftains and then the Anglo-Irish lords, were conscious that a cataclysmic change had come upon their world. By 1704 the native Irish owned only 14 per cent of the land of their own country. Such poets as Dáibhí Ó Bruadai (1625-1698) and Aogán Ó Rathaille (1675-1729) have left bitter attacks on the ‘lowts’ (as it seemed to them) who replaced the old aristocracy, ‘who spread the grey wing upon every tide’ after Limerick. The Bardic Schools were closed and then, in turn, the Courts of Poetry, which succeeded them. One large body of material known as Filíocht na nDaoine (Poetry of the People) consisted of anonymous folksong and poetry, often of great beauty and far from primitive. Much of it took the form of love songs and it bridged the dark years and provided a portable literature for those who had no other.

The songs stopped; as Sir George Petrie (1789-1866), the archaeologist put it in one of the most chilling remarks about the Great Famine of the 1840’s; the people had forgotten how to sing. By then, too, the language had lost its intellectual position; it was no longer the speech of those with power, wealth or influence. As Maureen Wall puts it in her 1906 Thomas Davis lecture ‘The Decline of the Irish Language’: ‘The Irish language had been banished from parliament, from the courts of law, from town and country government, from the civil service and from the upper levels of commercial life’.

As Gerald O’Brien shows in his essay ‘The Strange Death of the Irish Language’, (1780-1800) published in 1989, the last two decades of the 18th century were crucial in the determination of whether the decline should be serious or virtually terminal. A combination of the following factors all but finished Irish as anything other than a ‘provincial patois’; the growth of urbanisation; improvements in communications and the exposure to outside influences of what had been closed and self-sufficient monoglot communities; increased bourgeois prosperity and consequent Anglicisation among some native speakers; the Catholic Church’s decision to opt for general Anglicisation with no provision for Irish in the new seminary in Maynooth (established in 1796); the attention of the antiquarians who wished to preserve Irish as a fascinating relic; the association of spoken Irish with ‘drunkenness, idleness and improvidence’, and a lack of respectability about having any knowledge of it; the need for access to English as the language of contracts and other legal documents; the apolitical nature of Irish society, which diminished the need for the solidarity of a shared and exclusive language; the requirement of English for a whole range of public sector employment and in the armed forces; and as the century turned, the implicit (specific in the case of Daniel O’Connell) suggestion of the country’s new political leaders that lack of English was somehow a bar to political and and material progress.

O’Connell used Irish when it suited him, but as he wrote to his friend, W.J. O’Neill Daunt, – ‘Therefore although the Irish language is connected with many recollections that twine around the hearts of Irishmen, yet the superior quality of the English tongue, as the medium of all modern communication, is so great that I can witness without a sigh the gradual disuse of Irish’. Yet at the height of O’Connell’s influence the population of Irish speakers was at least two million, about 30 per cent of the population. By then, with the system of National Schools (established 1831) where English was the only medium of education in place and the strong support for Anglicisation among parents, mostly for utilitarian motives meant that the Irish speaking population steadily diminished. The effects of the Great Famine and the mass emigration which followed, mostly from what had been mainly Irish-speaking areas, meant that by 1891, Irish speakers numbered no more than 680,000.

A group of supporters of O’Connell, who became known as ‘The Young Irishmen’ differed strongly with O’Connell about his attitude to the use of arms and to his attitude to the Irish language. The brightest star, Thomas Davis (1814-1845) wrote ‘to lose your native tongue and to learn that of an alien is the worse badge of conquest – it is the chain of the soul. 

To have lost entirely the national language is death; the fetter has worn through’.

In a period of nine months (1934-40), Irish folklore collector, Séan Ó Cróinín, collected 1,500 manuscript pages from Séan Ó hAo (1861-1946), a fisherman who lived in the downland of Cregg, Glandore, near the shore of Trailong. The material collected covers a wide variety of subjects – accounts of fish and fishing, nets, boats, a detailed knowledge of the Cork coastline, many tales, long and short, sad and merry, ghost stories, historical events – a splendid account of old times in the barony (of Carbery). Most of what Séan Ó Cróinín collected was edited by his brother Donncha Ó Cróinín and published in 1985. Part 2 has yet to be published. In page 631, Séan Ó hAo refers to the Irish language and its decline and its decline: Nobody spoke any word except Irish. The well-off spoke it as well as the poor people. Religious education was learned through Irish in the churches and schools. That stopped about 40-odd years ago (c. 1900). The school masters and mistresses were ‘down’ on it (the Irish language) as well as the Church; the young priests and bishops had no Irish – why I don’t know. And since then Irish is going backwards. But the people who had Irish continued speaking it. At that time, people thought that Irish wouldn’t disappear. But it did and now they are trying to learn it again, and maybe they will. I hope they will learn it.

Séan Ó hAo mentions the places along the Cork coast where Irish was spoken and he also mentions some of the people he met and conversed with in Irish. He refers to the Kinsale area, Clonakilty, the coastal area between Clonakilty and the Galley Head. In the coastal townlands between Rosscarbery and Glandore the Irish language was vibrant. In the townlands of Ballinaclogh, Cregg – ‘dó dhinidis a ngnó gan focal Béarla, ach amháin Gaoluin an fado’ (they did their business without using a word of English, completely in Irish). Irish was spoken along the coast from Myross to Baltimore. There was little Irish in Baltimore or in Ballydehob or Schull. Irish was spoken of course on Cape Clear and Heir island. Hamit tells of a conversation he had with a man from the Ardfield area who said ‘Nil won mhaith inti…do bhí sé ag na seandaoine go liofa. Ba bheag a mahaitheas dóibhe é…ní bhfuaireadar éini aisti’ ‘(There is no good in it [Irish]). The old people could speak it fluently. Little the good it was for them – they got nothing out of it’. Hamit finished the story thus: ‘Tá an sail imitate chun lathaí’ (The world is gone to the dogs).

In the 19th century many people deliberately thrust Irish from them and embraced English. More and more people began to equate Irish with poverty, humiliation, insult and degradation and encouraged (in fact insisted) their children to speak English. English had become the language of officialdom, of emigration, of business, as the poet Michael Hartnett puts it… ‘finding English a necessary sin – the perfect language to sell pigs in’. The evictions, emigration and the general feeling of hopelessness accomplished what centuries of strife had failed to achieve.

To quote David Green: ‘In Ireland parents who knew little or no English were not content that their children should learn English at school – which, since the establishment of the national school system in 1831 was not too difficult to achieve since the children were forced to speak English in school where no Irish was taught. the parents went much further by insisting that they should not speak Irish at all. The system of ‘policing and flogging’ the children for speaking Irish was planned and carried out by the parents and schoolchildren working in co-operation.

Towards the end of the 19th century there was a new interest in Irish language and customs. This led to the foundation of the Gaelic Athletic Association (1884) and Conradh na Gaeilge (The Gaelic League) in 1893. Branches of the Gaelic League were established all over the country. The founding members were Eoin Mac Neill, Fr Eugene O’Growney, Fr Michael Hickey, Pádraig O’Brien from Ballydehob, T. O’Neill Russell and, most prominently, Dubhglás de hÍde (Douglas Hyde). Hyde’s dream was of an Irish-speaking Ireland and that, in turn, meant that the whole movement should be based on the Gaeltacht and extended to the rest of the country. In August 1899 Hyde wrote: ‘In anglicising ourselves. we have thrown away with a light heart the best claim which we have upon the world’s recognition of us as a separate nationality…Irish nationhood was like some holy sacrificial fire, and where we stood watching, O’Neill and Sarsfield and Emmet and Davis had watched before’. By 1904 there were almost 600 branches of the Gaelic League with a total membership of 50,000 people. The early league teachers were untrained voluntary workers but among them were a few who appreciated the need for effective teaching methods, for teaching aids, and most importantly qualified teachers. The number of timírí (organisers) and travelling teachers increased rapidly. Most of them were native speakers, but only a few were trained. It was decided to establish special schools to provide intensive training sources for the league’s teachers. Coláiste na Mumhan in Ballingeary, Co Cork was opened in July 1904, with five more colleges being established in the following two years.

Coláiste Chairbre (Carbery College) was established in 1910. It was housed in the Old Glandore National School. The first professors (ollamhs) were Peadar Ó hAnnracháin, Micheál Ó Cuileanain, both of Skibbereen, and Séan Ó Muirthile of Leap. Other local teachers in the Cólaiste included, at different times, Pádraig Ó Conaill of Myross, Gearóid Ó Suilleabhain of Skibbereen and Seamus O’Brien of Barley Hill, Rosscarbery. In addition to holding language classes they taught Irish, dance, history, folklore, music, place name lore and so on. They organised feiseanna, céilithe and aeraíochtaí (concerts, dances and open-air summer concerts.

Many of the leaders of the 1916 Rising were members of Conradh na Gaeilge. Pearse wrote in March 1914: ‘I have said again and again that when the Gaelic League was founded in 1893, the Irish revolution began’.

Peadar Ó hAnnrachain was undoubtedly the driving force behind the Gaelic League in the Skibbereen area. He acted as ‘timire’ in several counties, in Clare and Limerick and elsewhere. The Southern Star was the first newspaper to promote the Gaelic League. They published reports on Gaelic League activities – meetings, feiseanna and so on. After criticism by Ó hAnnrachain that their reports were written in English, the editor acquired new machinery so that the Gaelic script could be used for articles written in Irish. Ó hAnnrachain got immense support from Michael Ó Cuileannan, Principal of Skibbereen Boy’s National School. Ó Cuileannan spent his life collecting the béaloideas (folklore) of West Cork from the old people. Séan Ó hAo refers to Coláiste Chairbre in Glandore. He relates how the Parish Priest and some of the teachers approached him to tell stories or to sing some songs in the Coláiste. He said ‘Act do chuas a ‘trial orthu trí nú ceathair o uairibh, nú cúig…Thugadan go léir clubs le héisteacht dom. Thaitin mo chuid cainte leo’ (I went to them three or four times or five. They all listened to me and liked my stories.)